Spring Fever and Trailer Loading

You’ve been home all winter, working outside until the tips of your fingers sting. Carrying fifty-pound bags of feed over ice, falling down but not feeling a thing. Partly the cold and partly with so many layers you feel nothing, but also can’t quite sit up. So, you lay there a while plotting the smart … Read more

How Long Does It Take To Train a Horse?

I have a herd of relatively normal retired horses. And then this gang of raconteurs, misanthropes, and dangerous characters, referred to as The Spots. If I’m feeling affectionate, they are The Deplorables because those who take such pride in breaking the rules deserve a term of endearment. Excuse my arrogance. I don’t even know the … Read more

Calming Signals: Love vs Understanding

The mare would not pick up the canter. She just wouldn’t. In her defense, the rider was off balance. Every time the rider prepared for the canter, she’d launched herself forward a little out of the saddle. Almost like pumping on a swing, and the horse would slow down. I’m pretty sure the mare thought … Read more

Calming Signals: Another Word for Dominant

There is a wild stallion on the ridge fighting all comers for his harem of mares. We think aggression and violence maintain order in the band. Hence, we train using fear-based methods to prove we are the real alpha. It might work on the Disney channel, but it’s total fiction. Herds of horses are cooperative, … Read more

Calming Signals: What If Horses Are Meant to be a Mystery?

I’m not sure when I started sitting on horses, but I hadn’t started school. You couldn’t really call it riding. When my parents needed me out of the way, they put me on the back of a tall gray mare named Lady. We were in a pen, and she wandered about grazing. They left and … Read more

Nube: An Iberian Stall Toy for the Donkeys

In the first months after coming to our farm, it was a simple schedule for Nube:  wrestle, eat, sleep, repeat. The horses were kind, but it was mutually agreed they could do without Nube’s adolescent fart games.  It was great news because fart games are the bread and butter of donkey life. I’d given the … Read more

Bhim: An Invitation to a Clinic in Your Home

I have a problem. I’m a clinician who loves her job and at the same time, wonders if there are better ways to do it. I’m obsessed with evolving clinics to be easier for horses and less stressful for riders. We love the camaraderie of a clinic weekend, if it isn’t our horse in a … Read more

Silent Night: The Truest Words Aren’t Words At All.

I was standing outside of a hotel at five in the morning waiting for my limo. Obviously, several things had gone wrong and it wasn’t even dawn yet. I was pacing, wondering if the limo would cost more than my flight home when I saw a horse sculpture. It was not quite abstract or realistic. … Read more

Do You Need to Keep Your Horse Calm?

I can’t be the only woman of a certain age whose parents thought she needed to be muffled indefinitely. They wanted a quiet polite daughter and look how that turned out. And I’m probably the wrong person to write this since I have a rescue dog that hasn’t stopped barking since 2014. Here goes anyway.  … Read more

Calming Signals: Thoughts About Spooking at Nothing

There are two kinds of spooking. This is the first: It was midmorning on the ranch, and we were riding out. My friend was on the best trail horse in the world, and they were helping me and my young gelding gain confidence. We usually walked through an especially beautiful ravine where the plant growth … Read more